Sabine took her suitcase from Eugène. Then she shook hands with Barbara and Harold. “I am leaving you here,” she said, and walked off down a dark, deserted avenue.
The other three turned into a narrow side street, and the Americans stopped when Eugène stopped, in front of the huge door of an apartment house. The door was locked. He rang the bell and waited. There was a clicking noise and the door gave under the pressure of his hand and they passed through a dimly lighted foyer to the elevator. Eugène put the suit cases into it, indicated that Harold and Barbara were to get in also, pressed the button for the sixth floor, and stepped out. “It only holds three,” he said. “And with the suitcases it would not rise.”
He shut the elevator door, and as they went up slowly, they saw him ascending the stairs, flight after flight. He was there in time to open the elevator door for them. He let them into the dark apartment with his key and then proceeded down the hall, turning on lights as he went, to the bedroom they were to occupy. “It is our room when Alix is here,” he explained.
“But we don’t want to put you out of your room,” Harold protested.
“During the summer I prefer to sleep in the study,” Eugène said.
He showed them the toilet, in a separate little room off the hall, and the bathroom they were to use. The gas hot-water heater was in the other bathroom, and he led them there and showed them how to turn the heater on and off when they wanted a bath.
They went back to the room that was to be theirs, and Eugène opened the window and unlatched the metal shutters and pushed them outward, letting in the soft night air. They saw that the room opened onto an iron balcony. Eugène removed the pillows from a big studio couch, and then he drew the Kelly-green bedspread off and folded it and put it over the back of a chair. They watched him solemnly, as if he were demonstrating the French way to fold a bedspread. He showed them how to unhook the pillow covers and where the extra blankets were, and then he said good night. During all this, everybody was extremely polite, as if they had tried everything else and found that nothing works but politeness and patience.
Chapter 13
IN THE FIRST LUMINOUS QUARTER-HOUR of daylight, the Place Pierre-Joseph Redouté in the 16th arrondissement of Paris was given over to philosophical and mathematical speculation. The swallows skimming the wet rooftops said: What are numbers?
The sky, growing paler, said: What is being when being becomes morning?
What is “five,” asked the birds, apart from “five” swallows?
The French painter and lithographer who belonged in the center of the Place and who from his tireless study of natural forms might have been able to answer those questions was unfortunately not there any more; he had been melted down and made into bullets by the Germans. The huge block of rough granite that was substituting for him said: Matter is energy not in motion, and the swallows said: Very well, try this, then, why don’t you … and this … and this …
Though proof was easy and the argument had long ago grown tiresome, the granite refrained. But it could not resist some slight demonstration, and so it gave off concentric circles of green grass, scarlet salvia, curbing, and cobblestone.
The wide, wet, empty streets that led away from the Place Redouté like the rays of a star or the spokes of a wheel also at the very same time returned to it—returned from the Etoile, the Place d’Ièna, the Place Victor Hugo, the Trocadéro, and the Bois de Boulogne. The sky went on turning lighter. The pissoir, ill-smelling, with its names, dates, engagements, and obscene diagrams, said: Everything that happens, in spite of the best efforts of the police, is determined by the space co-ordinates x, y, and z, and the time co-ordinate t.
God is love, said the leaves on the chestnut trees, and the iron church bell filled the air with a frightful clangor.
Across an attic window in the rue Malène a workshirt hanging on a clothesline to dry grew a darker blue as it absorbed the almost invisible rain.
On the other side of the street, at the same sixth-floor level, a pair of metal shutters folded back gave away the location of a bedroom. The sleepers, both in one bed, were turned toward each other. She moved in her sleep, and he put his hand under her silken knees and gathered them to his loins and went on sleeping. Shortly afterward they turned away from each other, as if to demonstrate that in marriage there is no real resting place. Now love is gathered like great long-stemmed summer flowers, now the lovers withdraw from one another to nourish secretly a secret life. He pulls the blanket and sheet closer, shutting off the air at the back of his neck. She has not committed the murder, the police are not looking for her, and there is just time, between the coming and going of the man in the camel’s-hair coat and the footsteps outside the door, to hide the papers. But where? If she puts them inside a book, they will be found, even though there are so many books. She will explain and they will not listen. They will not believe her. And he is asleep, dreaming. She has no one to stand by her when they come. She goes to the closet and finds there the camel’s-hair coat worn by the murderer, who knew she was innocent and good, and slipped in and out of the apartment without being seen, and so who will believe her?… Help! Help! takes the form of a whimper.
Across the room a long-deferred, often-imagined reconciliation is taking place on the wall, behind glass. The Prodigal Son, wearing a robe of stone, kneels on one knee before the Prodigal Father. One arm reaches out and touches the old man’s side. One arm, upraised, touches his face. The old man sits, bearded, with a domed forehead, a large stone mouth, blunt nose, and eyes nearly closed with emotion. He has placed one hand against the young man’s head, supporting it, but not looking (why is that?) at the face that is looking up at his with such sorrow and love.
The iron balcony, polished by the rain, turns darker, shines, collects puddles. Water dripping from the eaves is caught in the first fold of the awnings.
The sleepers’ breath is shallow. His efforts to take her in his arms meet with no response. He cannot blame her for this because she is asleep. The sky goes on turning lighter and whiter. It has stopped raining. A man (out of whose dream?) comes up the rue Malène and, noiseless as a cat, his vibrations sinister, crosses the Place Redouté and disappears down the same street that Sabine Viénot took. But that was last night and now it is morning.
Crowded to the extreme edge of the bed by his half-waking and half-sleeping lust, she turns.
“Are you awake?” he says softly.
“Yes.”
“We’re back in Paris.”
“So I see.”
Beside the door to the hall a bookshelf, too far away to read the titles. Then an armchair, with her dress and slip draped over the back and on the seat her bra, panties, and stockings in a soft heap. Her black wedge-soled shoes. Back of the chair a photograph—a detail of sculpture from a medieval church.
“Why the Prodigal Son?”
There is no answer from the other side of the bed.
He continues his investigation of the room. A low round table, elaborately inlaid, with two more period chairs. The radiator, and then the French windows. The room is high up, above the treetops, and there are windows directly across the way, an attic floor above that, and a portion of blue sky. Love in a garret. A door leading into the next room. A little glass table with knickknacks on it. Another chair. On this chair, his clothes. Beside it his huge shoes—careless, scuffed, wide open, needing to be shined. Then the fireplace, with a mirror over it. Then an armchair, with the green spread and pillow covers and bolster piled on it. And over the bed an oil painting, a nude lying on a bed, plump, soft-fleshed, blonde. Alix—but not really. It is eighteenth century. He turns over.
“She was living for his return,” he said. “That’s all she talked about. And then when he came, they quarreled.”
“Perhaps they didn’t quarrel. Perhaps they just said good-by and she went back to the château.”
“Then why was she avoiding us? It doesn’t make sense. She must not have gone home by the road that goes
past the cemetery. She probably didn’t want us to see that she had been crying. All week long she kept waiting for a letter and there wasn’t any letter.”
“He called.”
“That’s true. I forgot that he called on Thursday. But all week end he wasn’t himself. He wouldn’t go swimming. And he didn’t have a good time at the party. Did she?”
“Apparently.”
“And the rest of the time, they were off somewhere by themselves. In the back part of the house … You don’t think it has something to do with us?”
“No.”
“I feel that it must have something to do with us.… She may not have wanted us here, sleeping in their bed and all.”
“She said she was very glad.”
“Then it must be all right. She wouldn’t lie about it, just to be polite. If they quarreled, I can understand his not wanting to talk afterward. But in that case, why the long cheerful conversation with the man in the corridor?”
She turned over on her back and looked at the ceiling. “It’s an effort for them. They have to choose their words carefully in order to make us understand.”
“It’s an effort for us too.”
“They may not always feel like making the effort.”
“Nothing was too much effort at first.… Did Sabine say ‘Eugène is not like other French boys’? That may be what she meant—that he was friendly one minute and not the next. Or maybe when his curiosity is satisfied, he simply isn’t interested any more.… I suppose the streets of Paris are safe, but I felt very queer watching her go off alone at that time of night. You think she got home all right?”
“Oh yes.”
“I would have offered to take her home myself, but I didn’t see how I could leave you, at that point.… How can she go on being nice to him?”
“She knows him better than we do.”
He turned back again and, finding that she was curled up in a ball and he couldn’t get at her, he put his hand between her knees. He felt her drifting back into sleep, away from him.
“What time is it?”
He drew his bare arm out from under the covers and looked at his wrist watch. “Five minutes of eight. Why?”
“Breakfast,” she said. “In a strange kitchen.”
He sat up in bed. “Do you wish we’d gone to a hotel?”
“We’re here. We’ll see how it works out.”
“I could call the Vouillemont.… I didn’t know what to do last night. He seemed genuinely apologetic.… If we never had to see him again, it would be simpler. But the suitcases are coming here.”
She pushed the covers aside and started to get up, and then, suddenly aware of the open window and the building across the street, she said: “They can see us in bed.”
“That can’t be of much interest to anybody. Not in Paris,” he said, and, naked as he was, he went to the curtained windows and closed them. In the dim underwater light they dressed and straightened up the room, and then they went across the hall to the kitchen. She was intimidated by the stove. He found the pilot light and turned on one of the burners for her. The gas flamed up two inches high. They found the teakettle and put water on to boil and then searched through the icebox. Several sections of a loaf of dark bread; butter; jam; a tiny cake of ice. In their search for what turned out to be the right breakfast china but the wrong table silver, they opened every cupboard door in the kitchen and pantry. While she was settling the teacart, he went back across the hall to their bedroom, opened one of the suitcases, and took out powdered coffee and sugar. She appeared with the teacart and he opened the windows.
“Do you want to call Eugène?”
He didn’t, but it was not really a question, and so he left the room, walked down the hall to the front of the apartment, hesitated, and then knocked lightly on the closed door of the study. A sleepy voice answered.
“Le petit déjeuner,” Harold said, in an accent that did credit to Miss Sloan, his high-school French teacher. At the same time, his voice betrayed uncertainty about their being here, and conveyed an appeal to whatever is reasonable, peace-loving, and dependable in everybody.
Since ordinary breakfast-table conversation was impossible, it was at least something that they were able to offer Eugène the sugar bowl with their sugar in it, and the plate of bread and butter, and that Eugène could return the pitcher of hot milk to them handle first. Eugène put a spoonful of powdered coffee into his cup and then filled it with hot water. Stirring, he said: “I am sorry that my work prevents me from doing anything with you today.”
They assured him that they did not expect or need to be entertained.
Harold put a teaspoonful of powdered coffee in his cup and filled it with hot water, and then, stirring, he sat back in his chair. The chair creaked. Every time he moved or said something, the chair creaked again.
Eugène was not entirely silent, or openly rude—unless asking Harold to move to another chair and placing himself in the fauteuil that creaked so alarmingly was an act of rudeness. It went right on creaking under his own considerable weight, and all it needed, Harold thought, was for somebody to fling himself back in a fit of laughter and that would be the end of it.
Through the open window they heard sounds below in the street: cartwheels, a tired horse’s plodding step, voices. Harold indicated the photograph on the wall and asked what church the stone sculpture was in. Eugène told him and he promptly forgot. They passed the marmalade, the bread, the black-market butter, back and forth. Nothing was said about hotels or train journeys.
Eugène offered Harold his car, to use at any time he cared to, and when this offer was not accepted, the armchair creaked. They all three had another cup of coffee. Eugène was in his pajamas and dressing gown, and on his large feet he wore yellow Turkish slippers that turned up at the toes.
“Ex-cuse me,” he said in Berlitz English, and got up and left them, to bathe and dress.
The first shrill ring of the telephone brought Harold out into the hall. He realized that he had no idea where the telephone was. At that moment the bathroom door flew open and Eugène came out, with his face lathered for shaving, and strode down the hall, tying the sash of his dressing gown as he went. The telephone was in the study but the ringing came from the hall. Between the telephone and the wall plug there was sixty feet of cord, and when the conversation came to an end, Eugène carried the instrument with him the whole length of the apartment, to his bathroom, where it rang three more times while he was shaving and in the tub. Before he left the apartment he knocked on their door and asked if there was anything he could do for them. Harold shook his head.
“Sabine called a few minutes ago,” Eugène said. “She wants you and Barbara to have dinner with her tomorrow night.”
He handed Harold a key to the front door, and cautioned him against leaving it unlocked while they were out of the apartment.
When enough time had elapsed so that there was little likelihood of his returning for something he had forgotten, Harold went out into the hall and stood looking into one room after another. In the room next to theirs was a huge cradle, of mahogany, ornately carved and decorated with gold leaf. It was the most important-looking cradle he had ever seen. Then came their bathroom, and then a bedroom that, judging by the photographs on the walls, must belong to Mme Cestre. A young woman who looked like Alix, with her two children. Alix and Eugène on their wedding day. Matching photographs in oval frames of Mme Bonenfant and an elderly man who must be Alix’s grandfather. Mme Viénot, considerably younger and very different. The schoolboy. And a gray-haired man whose glance—direct, lifelike, and mildly accusing—was contradicted by the gilt and black frame. It was the kind of frame that is only put around the photograph of a dead person. Professor Cestre, could it be?
With the metal shutters closed, the dining room was so dark that it seemed still night in there. One of the drawing-room shutters was partly open and he made out the shapes of chairs and sofas, which seemed to be upholstered in brown or russet v
elvet. The curtains were of the same material, and there were some big oil paintings—portraits in the style of Lancret and Boucher.
Though, taken individually, the big rooms were, or seemed to be, square, the apartment as a whole formed a triangle. The apex, the study where Eugène slept, was light and bright and airy and cheerful. The window looked out on the Place Redouté —it was the only window of the apartment that did. Looking around slowly, he saw a marble fireplace, a desk, a low bookcase of mahogany with criss-crossed brass wire instead of glass panes in the doors. The daybed Eugène had slept in, made up now with its dark-brown velours cover and pillows. The portable record player with a pile of classical records beside it. Beethoven’s Fifth was the one on top. Da-da-da-dum … Music could not be Eugène’s passion. Besides, the records were dusty. He tried the doors of the bookcase. Locked. The titles he could read easily through the criss-crossed wires: works on theology, astral physics, history, biology, political science. No poetry. No novels. He moved over to the desk and stood looking at the papers on it but not touching anything. The clock on the mantel piece was scandalized and ticked so loudly that he glanced at it over his shoulder and then quickly left the room.
THE CONCIERGE CALLED OUT to them as they were passing through the foyer. Her quarters were on the right as you walked into the building, and her small front room was clogged with heavy furniture—a big, round, oak dining table and chairs, a buffet, with a row of unclaimed letters inserted between the mirror and its frame. The suitcases had come while they were out, and had been put in their room, the concierge said.
The Chateau Page 24
